Users gain capacity to download full archive of tweets from Twitter

Several Twitter users began noticing Sunday that they now have the ability to download their full archive of tweets, a capability that users have asked for since Twitter’s early days, but which looks like is rolling out to users now, The Next Web first reported Sunday morning. Several users were noting that they were suddenly able to click a link on their settings page to download their full archives, and a link was sent to them when the archives were ready.

Update: A Twitter spokeswoman confirmed Sunday afternoon that the company is “currently testing the ability to download your Tweets with a very small percentage of users.” She said they could not provide more information on when this will roll out more broadly.

This is a much-awaited feature that users have asked for since Twitter’s beginnings in 2006, and a functionality that sites like Facebook already offer. Longtime users of Twitter will find that it’s nearly impossible to access some of their earliest tweets, and there was previously no way to download all of a user’s tweets in a simple, useable format.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has said several times that users would gain this functionality soon, telling the New York Times in July that the capability is not an easy thing to roll out: “It’s a different way of architecting search, going through all tweets of all time. You can’t just put three engineers on it,” he said. He mentioned in November that the functionality would hopefully be available before the end of the year.